Considerable efforts have been made in the area of producing inexpensive reproductions of original artwork. Such reproductions are commonly sold as framed art but may also be sold as unframed art, as artwork in greeting cards, calendars, books and the like, covers for various consumer items, such as perfumes, cigarettes, wine, liquor, packaged foods, etcetera, clothing and apparel packages, puzzles, paint by number artwork, board games, maps, sporting goods, sporting bags to name but a few applications of this technology. In applicant's co-pending application Ser. No. 08/408,900 filed Mar. 22, 1995, abandoned in favour of Continuation application Ser. No. 08/618,401, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,667,747, a vacuum formed three-dimensional surface article is described, particularly as that article would relate to the reproduction of original works of art. The system described is very effective in vacuum forming a thermoformable plastic sheet to reproduce in the thermoformed product a surface texture which simulates the artist's brushstrokes of the original where such surface texture is in register with the image printed on the plastic sheet.
Other examples of embossed thermoformed or pressed substrates in making reproductions of artwork is defined for example in U.S. Pat. No. 3,010,152. A thermoformable sheet is vacuum formed to provide a surface relief to the resultant globe which would resemble mountains, valleys and the like. An embossing technique for paper or plastic is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,182,063 and 5,201,548. Other techniques for pressing a three-dimensional relief into the printed image are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,285,744 and 4,308,224. These various processes provide in one degree or another suitable reproductions of the original. The framing of these various reproductions is carried out in the normal manner where the embossed or pressed paper or plastic article is mounted in its generally flat state on a suitable stretcher board or the like and framed in the normal manner. Such framing techniques are quite common and often used in framing oil paintings. Because of the nature of the surface of the manufactured article, it is usually not necessary to cover the faces of the reproduction with glass or other transparent material because the surface of the reproduction can withstand normal use. The other alternative in framing reproductions is to use a transparent cover such as glass or plastic where the cover protects the underlying artistic reproduction which may be a water colour or the like. As with the framing of oil paintings, mattes are commonly used to surround or frame the water colour or other type of reproduction which is then subsequently framed about its perimeter to provide a complete product.
The artistic reproductions may also be used in greeting cards, calendars, books and the like. As described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,063, the reproduction is out to size and laminated to a backing which in turn is mounted on a suitable support which may be a greeting card, a calendar base or the front cover of a book. The cutting to size of the artistic reproduction, laminating it to a suitable substrate is very time-consuming and laborious. The substrate may be subject to warping due to ambient moisture conditions. The substrate with the print or artistic reproduction laminated thereto is subject to curling at the edges or possibly being ripped from the substrate. Although such artistic reproduction assemblage is acceptable for the inexpensive line of consumer items, the assembly suffers greatly from costs of manufacture and product stability. Not only from the standpoint of dimensional stability but as well stability of the artistic reproduction in the matte for the framed reproduction.
It is therefore an object of an aspect of this invention to provide an artistic reproduction which is dimensionally stable and is readily assembled, as a framed piece of artwork or as a piece of artwork to complement other types of consumer items.